Robert E Lee Research Paper

General Robert E. Lee
Robert E. Lee was born in 1807 in Stafford, Virginia. Lee was a great army general during the civil war (1861-1865) who commanded the army of Northern Virginia. Lee was probably the most famous general from the south during the civil war. Robert E. Lee's father was Major General Henry Lee III (nicknamed the Light Horse Harry) in (1756–1818) the governor of Virginia, and his mother was Anne Hill Carter (1773–1829). Also one of Lee's great grandparents, Henry Lee I, was a great Virginian colonist of the old English colonies. When Robert was 17 in 1824, Fitzhugh (a West Point attendant himself) wrote to the Secretary of War, John C. Calhoun, urging that Lee could be given an appointment to the United States Military Academy at West Point. Fitzhugh wrote little of Lee’s academic progress, also little about of his family, but he said that the boy was 18. Instead of mailing the letter, Fitzhugh had young Lee delivers it himself. In March 1824, Robert Lee received his appointment to go to West Point, but due to many of juniors allowed, Lee would have to wait another year to begin his studies of tactics,
Lee supported President Johnson's plan of reconstruction to rebuild America, but joining with the Democrats in opposing the Radical Republicans who demanded penalty against the South, mistrusting its responsibility to the abolition of slavery and also mistrusting the region's loyalty to the United States. Lee generally supported civil rights for all as in the Declaration of Independence where all are treated equally, as well as a the system of free public schools for blacks, but he opposed allowing blacks to vote. "My own opinion is that, at this time, they [black Southerners] cannot vote intelligently, and that giving them the [vote] would lead to a great deal of demagoguism, and lead to embarrassments in various ways," Lee